A POLITE REVIEW: BIRD BOX

Spoilers ahead. Well it doesn’t even matter because I’m sure some dickhead has spoiled this film for you on a social media timeline somehow. 

After days upon days of spoilers about this movie on twitter I muted any and all words associated with this movie until I saw it because people act like they can’t just say “Aye BirdBox was a good movie you should check it out” and leave it at that. So of course I watch it the next day and yeah let’s start.

First. Netflix needs to fix their shit because I’m tired of searching for new shit when it drop when it should be at the top of the fucking list. How in the fuck am I searching for Narcos when it’s a new release? They should be at the top since they’re new. I even had to search for “Infinity War” and that’s one of the biggest movies of all time. I had to get that off my chest. 

Anyway.

Birdbox is The Happening 2.0 in a nutshell. It’s based on Mallory. A single pregnant woman 5 year journey through an apocalyptic world where people are killing themselves. Is it as bad as The Happening? No. Is it any better? Not by much. But I will say this “The Happening” at least had an explanation of the suicides. The plants in “The Happening” created a way to release pheromones that fucked with the human mind and make humans commit suicide and the reason why the plants released this was because they viewed humans as a threat because humans were fucking up the planet which is true as fuck. In BirdBox we have some entity that’s just outside and that’s it. 

There is really no meaning to the film because there is nothing concrete about anything except you have to wear a blindfold to survive and birds can warn you of the entities presence but any animal could do the shit that the birds did. Any animal senses are way more heightened than ours. Any depth there is in this film is on the parenthood side of it which was the same thing you saw in “A Quiet Place” and if you’re asking, the answer is yes. Yes, “A Quiet Place” is waaaaaaay better than BirdBox and it’s not close. End that comparison and debate immediately. 

The Villains or I guess you could call them the puppet masters in this film case is a supernatural entity that the audience cannot see but the characters can see this villain and if they see this villain they lose all control and commit suicide. 

The movie starts off pretty strong but as soon as you get a glimpse of what’s going on and who the main characters are the movie just goes downhill from that point. After every one is in the Asian guy house I kept wondering if this thing is a supernatural entity then why can’t it come inside the house? By that logic I could stand under a huge tree and look down at the shade and the entity shouldn’t be able to harm me. It can control something as complex as the human mind but can’t go into a house without a host? That was a huge hole in the film. We don’t know the villain or it’s weaknesses so it’s tough for the film to make sense. We just know it exists and we have Lil Rel’s theory that he explained at the beginning of the film but again it’s a theory and we don’t have a “Why?”

Then there’s the matter of the entity whispering to you with a dead loved one’s voice. Why is Mallory running from the evil entity when all it does is just whisper to you? It doesn’t cause you bodily harm if you can’t see it so why in the fuck are they running from it? If the spirit call my name and tell me to look I’m a just say “SHUT THE FUCK UP! GOD DAMN NIGGA” and just keep walking. I’m not bout to waste my breath running. The only people they needed to run from were the actual psychotic people who for whatever reason were not affected by this entity and would go around trying to open people eyes like Porkchop did to Doug on that episode his bitch ass was scared to see “The Abnormal” movie. My issue is that the film doesn’t follow it’s own rules it sets. Doesn’t make sense for the psycho people to just try and make people open their eyes when they could just kill the people themselves. 

You get a glimpse of the monster in that crazy British guy drawings but we don’t truly know if that’s what the entity is because again the perception of what they see is vague. Those drawings could only be how HE sees the entity in his mind. Another crazy person might see the monster in a different way and shape. I usually like movies or shows that leave things up to your interpretation like the ending of “No Country For Old Men” or the anime “Cowboy Bebop” are good examples of this but in those examples the villains had motives. In Birdbox we don’t know why the entity is doing this to people or how it was created. 

The back and forth between the flashback and present I could’ve really did without. It was annoying and didn’t do much to add anything to the film and it basically gave away a spoiler and you knew off top that there was no way Mallory had 2 kids.

Acting wise Sandra Bullock is a veteran so of course acting wasn’t an issue on her end. John Malkovich was great. Douglas was the only character I fucked with because he was the only one that made any fucking sense. Just remember when people are calling you an asshole that means 90% of the time you’re right about shit. Everyone else was meh. Except MGK he was awful. He disappeared and no one cared. 

You knew damn well no black people was surviving this shit. Before I even began the movie I knew some black folks bout to die and of course I was right. They went out heroic I guess you could say. Speaking of that, when you see Tom’s final scene the psychotic people who go around opening people eyes told him to take his blindfold off and if he didn’t they’d kill him. WHAT FUCKING SENSE DOES THAT MAKE??!! He’s gonna die either way. Just kill him. He was responsible for letting people into the house and grocery store and it took him 5 years to get some pussy in the apocalypse…. Tom was useless. 

There’s no character building in anyone. I didn’t really care about any characters except for the kids because they’re kids and that’s it. Mallory turned into Douglas in the present day scenes and yelled at the kids so much that Joe Jackson would be proud. See how Douglas legacy lived on. He was always right. But yeah the movie doesn’t really make me give a fuck about anyone. 

The ending was stupid as fuck. They’re just gonna live with blind people forever. What happens when the crazy people find a blind person and threaten them to look? They’re just gonna leave them alone? Who the fuck knows. Who cares. 

There’s some good things about the film like the spirituality factors Charlie talked about and the tough choice of self preservation and showing empathy and making the right moral decisions during a crisis. Mallory didn’t treat her children like humans until she almost lost them and that shows how important parenthood is no matter the situation. But yeah that’s the only positives I took from this film.

1.5 outta 5 fruit snacks 

Peace